Convergence Culture Consortium - C3

I've linked the title to the weblog of the Convergence Culture Consortium(C3) website. This is something that I learned about from a columnist and friend at the newspaper I work for. He is currently a grad student at MIT in the comparative media studies program there.

C3 is hard to explain. In fact, all I'm going to really say about it is that this hand full of grad students at MIT are blogging about what they see in advertising right now. Good things and bad things. They are attempting to shape the way we see advertising.

I guess the best way to explain it is that they are trying to help companies like Turner Broadcasting and MTV try to figure out how advertise in a way that reaches the viewer. For TV they are trying to figure how to combat TiVo and DVR(which are the same thing, TiVo is a brand name).

They are delving into all media though and are trying to shape advertising for this digital age we live in where timeshifting is all the rage. Piccu watches tons of TV, but rarely ever sees a commercial because his DVR has a 5 second skip button meaning for a 30 second commercial, 6 little clicks is a quick and easy bypass.

Hot momma, hot momma!!!... Sorry, my office is mostly glass.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, while the boys and girls at MIT are trying to shape advertising for the digital age, they should also think about the content as well. I hear Piccu saying all of the time that there are certain shows that might be an hour long and he can watch them in 20 minutes. So you can factor in just as much actual content as far as the TV show goes along with all of the commercial breaks. So the shows aren't as good either.

ITunes and podcasting are changing music and radio is just dead anyway unless you dig sports or talk, but I've already discussed that. Satellite radio is the only way to go.

So check out the C3 blog and Sam Ford's posts. If you ask me, he covers the widest range of subjects. From magazine ads to soap operas to professional wrestling and more.